Rolling Stones fans with plenty of cash to burn may do worse than invest in a VIP package for their Slane Castle show. What do you get for your €393.16? Well...
Having done such a bang up job last year with Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese is turning his attentions to those other rock ‘n’ roll behemoths, The Rolling Stones.
The overall air of heat, decadence and general malaise that pervades this double album can best be summed up by a stray line from ‘Tumbling Dice’: “There’s fever in the funkhouse now”.
It’s unmistakably The Rolling Stones as we know and love them, down to the last chopped rhythm of Keith Richards’ telecaster, Charlie Watts’ snare crack and the mannered tics of Sir Mick’s white boy blues croak. Like The Ruttles’ clever pastiches of Beatles classics, the Stones appear to have perfected the art of parodying themselves to a point where you wonder if they might be having a laugh.
The Beatles and the Stones should, by rights, have been assigned to some sort of rock’n’roll museum by now – nice to look at, but surely irrelevant in this day and age.
He’s jammed with Bob Dylan, partied with Keith Moon, sued The Byrds, traded spiky tops with Rod Stewart, had close encounters with Presleys Reg and Elvis and played "name that key" with John Lee Hooker, but arguably the best moment in his life was when he was named small breeder of the year. RON WOOD, the man who would be the queen mum of rock 'n' roll, tells a mean tale.
Words: STUART CLARK. Pictures ROGER WOOLMAN
